Forever changes

There comes a time in women’s lives when, often unexpectedly, they start fanning themselves over their morning coffees, worrying about forgetting people’s names, and, once the shock has worn off, calculating how much money they are saving through not having to buy what are euphemistically called ‘sanitary products’.

The menopause is a predictablepublished in 1944, the Polish-American psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch argued that post-menopausal women who were happy were deviant and unfeminine. She likened the menopause to a “partial death”; it made women “deranged”. In (1966), Robert Wilson similarly described women who had been through the menopause as sexually neutered and unfeminine. According to him, oestrogen deficiency was analogous to castration. Of course, he had a stake in making these arguments. Wilson was an eminent Brooklyn gynaecologist and head of the Wilson Foundation, which was supported by millions of dollars in grants from the pharmaceutical industry. Among other products, his foundation produced hormone replacement therapy, the main ‘treatment’ for menopause symptoms.